Spring 2018 issue 1

Spring 2018. Issue I.

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Editors-in-Chief Aidan Calvelli & Noah Cowan Chief of Staff Michael Bass Associate Chief of Staff Ashley Chen Creative Director Klara Auerbach Cover art by Julie Benbassat Editorial Board

Senior Managing Editor Angie Kim Managing Editors Pieter Brower & Olivia Nash Associate Editors Taylor Auten Victor Brechenmacher Michael Danello Mary Dong Jack Glaser Michael Gold Christian Hanway Jordan Kranzler Anagha Lokhande Max Low Jared Samilow Lucy Walke Emily Yamron Gabriel Zimmerman

Data Board

Data Director Aansh Shah Associate Data Directors Julia Gilman & Zachary Horvitz Data Associates Rohit Chaparala Sarah Conlisk Michael Danello Amy Huang Tyler Jiang Malavika Krishnan Evan Lehmann Dheeraj Namburu Charlotte Perez Louise Tisch

Copy Editorial Board

Chief Copy Editor Allie Doyle Associate Chief Copy Editor Sam Parmer Associate Copy Editors Miles Campbell Halle Fowler Gabriela Gil Will Gomberg Joseph Hinton Noah Klein Emma Kumleben Michael Power Nanicha Sethpornpong Brendan Sweeney

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Content Board

Content Directors Jordan Campbell & Matthew Meyer US Section Managers Taylor Auten Brendan Pierce Rachel Risoleo US Staff Writers AJ Braverman Ashley Chen Brionne Frazier Michael Froid Annie Gersh Zachary Goldstein Nicholas Lindseth Sophia Petros Nathaniel Pettit Evan Pittman Ben Shumate Jamie Solomon Sean Sullivan Cartie Werthman Carter Woodruff World Section Managers Alessandro Borghese Allison Meakem Jeremy Rhee World Staff Writers Joshua Baum Vafa Behnam Stella Canessa Connor Cardoso Anna Corradi Michael Danello Dhruv Gaur Sean Joyce Christopher Kobel Annie Lehman-Ludwig Hans Lei Zoe Mermelstein Orwa Mohamad Anna Murphy Simran Nayak Culture Section Managers Alan Garcia-Ramos Madeleine Thompson Kion You Culture Staff Writers Noah Choi Jamie Flynn Tristan Harris Joseph Hinton Hugh Klein Nathaniel Kublin Jake Martin Andrew Rickert Olivia Rosenbloom Erika Undeland Alexander Vaughan Williams

Media Board

Media Director Katie Scheibal Content Creators Sobhit Arora Luqmaan Bokhara Tal Frieden Jenna Israel Orwa Mohamad Eileen Phou Jennifer Shook Yashi Wang

Interviews Board

Interviews Director Jack Makari Senior Editor Maya Gonzales Fitzpatrick Interviews Associates Cayla Kaplan Charles Saperstein Alexis Viera Joshua Waldman

Marketing, Operations, Business Board MOB Directors Owen Colby Bridget Duru Anna Marx MOB Associates Maria Hornacher Calista Shang Will Pate Stephanie Kendler Kevin Garcia Karolyn Lee Alan Swierczynski Oona Cahill Graham Gonzoles Austin Reynolds

Web Team

Web Associates Hannah Chow Viknesh Kasthuri

Creative Board Creative Director Klara Auerbach Staff Artists Sarah Nicita Gabrielle Santas

Brown Political Review

Contents

Spring 2018

CONTENTS

World 6

Stuck in the Middle Simran Nayak Nepal’s role in the China-India rivalry

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Legislating Letters Allison Meakem

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Irrigating Injustice Brianna McFadden

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When Hope Runs Dry Emily Yamron

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Kazakhstan’s alphabetical experiment Contradiction and inequality in Israel's water system

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3 Contents 4 Magazine in Numbers 5 Letter from the Editors

Lessons from Cape Town’s water crisis

A Faith Repressed Mike Danello The future of Chinese Christians

Special Feature: Food 20

2 Masthead

Banking on Avocados Brionne Frazier

Data Feature 26 Losing Power Evan Lehmann

How austerity kept the lights off in Puerto Rico

Cracking down on Mexican cartels

A Seat at the Table Joe Hinton Addressing Providence’s lack of restaurant diversity Milking Marriage Grant MacFaddin Forced marriage and famine in South Sudan Lab to Table Christian Hanway

The promising future of artificial meat

US 34

Mutually Assured Disruption Jack Glaser

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Encoded in Equality Nicholas Lindseth

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Island Interference Anuj Krishnamurthy

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Influencing Ads Peter Lees

How small nuclear weapons are changing the calculus of MAD Why recidivism risk assessment should stay out of the courtroom The history of strained US-Haiti relations Rejecting tech companies’ push for self-regulation

Interviews 9

Liz Ellis

12

Alissa Rubin

23

Ernie Stevens III

31

Mónica Ramírez

39

Jessie Handbury

47

Hank Herrera 3

Magazine in Numbers

4.8 million

The number of people in South Sudan facing food insecurity

26%

How much of Earth’s arable land is used for grazing and feed production

$13 billion

The amount states spend annually on pre-trial sentencing 4

1/3

The proportion of the 15,000 pledged houses in Haiti that the US has completed

$100,000

The amount spent by Russian actors on nearly 3,000 political advertisements on Facebook in 2016

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The number of prime ministers Nepal has had in the last decade

Letter from the Editors Only when we learned to cook did our genus truly begin.

Without the additional digestive efficiency that cooking made possible, the brains of Homo erectus never would have made the startling growth that defined human evolution. The path from this punctuated moment of advancement to today’s world is nearly identical to the path of our advancements in agriculture and food science.

Developments in farming let our nomadic ancestors start to build cities and specialize. The expansion of electrification and the invention of in-home refrigeration enabled the largest increase of leisure time in human history. The discovery of fermentation changed the way we party. Some foods have stories of technological advancement and human progress, others describe a complex blending of cultures and peoples, and still more represent the culmination of a life of practice. All foods tell stories; this issue is devoted to sharing a few of them.

However, for too many, the stories food tells are more a matter of survival than friendship. In 1941, Franklin Delano Roosevelt included “Freedom from Want” as one of the Four Freedoms that people everywhere in the world ought to enjoy, beginning the development of an internationally recognized “Right to Food.” But even though the human race produces more than enough food to feed everyone on the planet, and even though we have developed technologies to transport those foods thousands of miles, much of the world still lacks access to basic nutrition.

In many ways governments are a major determinant of who has food and what that food is.

Through crop insurance, caves filled with dairy in Missouri, or dietary guidelines, politics dictates what’s on our plates. And on an international scale, food aid, free trade agreements, or even economic embargoes contribute to vastly differential access to adequate food supplies.

Our feature explores the myriad ways that food shapes and is shaped by human action. Grant MacFaddin shows how failures to address food security in South Sudan affect intimate decisions about marriage. Brionne Frazier highlights the unseen connection food has to organized crime in Mexico, illustrating how politically tainted even organic produce can be. Joe Hinton looks critically at Brown’s hometown of Providence, linking the lack of black-owned restaurants to historical oppression. And Christian Hanway explores the future of alternative meats, forcing us to consider whether plant-based proteins can become as American as hot dogs.

Fundamentally, society cannot function without food. The fact that food access is not guaranteed for all people is one of the most pressing challenges of our times. Addressing this will require thinking of food as an object of justice, a political issue requiring debate and discussion.

Only when we see that the nourishment we get from food is just the last of the many steps that food has taken before reaching our plates can we fully appreciate the global challenge and opportunity that food politics presents. Virginia Woolf once said that “one cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.” If we want good thinking, good loving, and good sleeping, we must look beyond the dining room table to the farms, cultural norms, and halls of legislation that play such a large role in determining what ends up there.

We'd like to extend our gratitude to the Political Theory Project for their continued support of the Brown Political Review.

– Noah and Aidan

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Stuck in the middle

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devastating earthquake hit Nepal on April 25, 2015, killing more than 8,000 people and leaving millions homeless. Other nations quickly stepped in to help, sending supplies and search teams. Nepal was glad to accept any support it could get—or, more accurately, almost any. When Taiwan offered to send a rescue team, the Nepali government in Kathmandu declined, citing logistical reasons.

Nepal also warned an Indian Army rescue team not to encroach on China’s airspace. Many interpreted this behavior as an attempt to avoid angering China.

This unusual episode reflects a broader trend. Nepal is shifting geopolitical gears, pivoting away from its close ally, India, and drawing closer to its northern neighbor, China.

This shift is likely to accelerate. In late 2017, Nepali voters handed victory to a fledgling alliance of two far-left, China-friendly parties.

The two communist groups won a majority at all levels of government. The coalition, which took over in February, is expected to further steer the country toward China at the expense of Nepal’s traditionally close historical, cultural, and religious ties with India. The move may increase Nepal’s role as a pawn in the Sino-Indian geopolitical rivalry, and the country should take care to strike a balance in its relationship with both countries.

Nepal’s 2017 election took place without any major disruptions, despite occasional violent

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Nepal’s role in the China-India rivalry

skirmishes and attacks. The country’s path to democracy, however, has been rocky. Following pro-democracy protests against the country’s monarchy by the center-left Nepali Congress (NC) Party and leftist groups, a democratic constitution was adopted in 1990. However, Maoist groups, calling for the complete abolition of the monarchy, began a decade-long insurgency, leaving more than 18,000 dead.

In 2008, two years after a peace agreement was reached, the country finally abolished its monarchy in favor of a republic. While largescale violence has since subsided, the country has remained politically unstable, having been led by 10 prime ministers in as many years.

Wedged between two economic giants, Nepal has been asymmetrically dependent on India for much of its modern history. Its only reliable outlet to the sea is accessible through Kolkata, India—more than 1100 kilometers away— and Nepal relies on its southern neighbor for essential commodities, such as heating fuel, petrol, paper, rice, and other manufactured items.

In 2015, India accounted for more than half of Nepal’s imports and almost two-thirds of its exports.

Although mutually beneficial in some ways, the Nepali-Indian relationship is far from balanced. Some of their bilateral agreements, such as treaties to manage irrigation, have noticeably more benefits for India. Moreover, Nepal’s reliance on Indian imports means

New Delhi can put the country in an economic stranglehold at any time. This power dynamic became painfully clear in March 1989, when India closed most of its border crossings with Nepal for over a year, causing fuel shortages and sparking protests and riots. This blockade was widely understood as an attempt to discipline Kathmandu for an arms deal with China, which signaled closer ties with Beijing. For India, Nepal has long served as a buffer against its rival China, with whom it competes for regional dominance. The 1989 episode was one of the first indications that India was willing to use its economic leverage to make sure the Nepali government stayed in line.

Wedged between two economic giants, Nepal has been asymmetrically dependent on India for much of its modern history.

China has gradually expanded its involvement in Nepal over the past decade.

In 2014, China overtook India as the largest source of Nepali foreign direct investment, and Nepal is an increasingly popular destination for Chinese tourists. The two countries have signed agreements on transit, trade, investment in solar energy, connectivity, and the export of Nepali petroleum and oil products. Last year, the

two countries held their first-ever joint military exercise, and Nepali security forces have been accused of systematically repressing Tibetan refugees in order to prevent anti-China activism.

China, of course, is not just building these ties out of mere goodwill: Beijing’s overtures are part of a larger attempt to encroach on India’s dominance in South Asia.

Following the 2015 earthquake, China and India seemed to be competing to deliver aid to Nepal, sending disaster response forces, medical teams, and rescue equipment. However, Nepali public opinion did not always respond kindly to what was perceived as an overbearing Indian media focused on glorifying their country’s rescue mission. In fact, the spread of the hashtag #GoHomeIndianMedia actually forced the Nepali government to reiterate its gratitude to India.

Yet tensions between Kathmandu and New Delhi soon flared up again. In September 2015, a few months after the earthquake, Nepal ratified a new constitution after almost a decade of political wrangling. While the document was meant to consolidate Nepal’s status as a democracy and contained a number of highly progressive clauses, it drew the ire of minority groups like the Madhesi, an ethnic group in southern Nepal with close ties to India. The Madhesi argued that provincial boundaries drawn under the new constitution would undermine their political unity and representation. Since the Madhesi were also a critical source of votes for Indian

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi in northeastern India, Modi’s government rejected the new Nepali constitution as an undemocratic instrument aimed at disenfranchising minority groups. India’s concerns that the new constitution would impact its domestic politics and destabilize its northern neighbor culminated in an unofficial six-month blockade of oil tankers and consumer goods en route to Kathmandu. As was the case in 1989, the 2015 blockade led to serious fuel shortages in Nepal.

Nepal is shifting geopolitical gears, pivoting away from its close ally, India, and drawing closer to its northern neighbor, China.

Nepal’s prime minister at the time, K.P. Sharma Oli, vocally criticized the blockade and made clear his ambitions to wean Nepal off its economic dependence on India through closer cooperation with China. Oli even attributed the collapse of his government in 2016 to Indian meddling. Now, Oli leads the newly elected far-left Left Alliance government and has shown no signs of changing course regarding India. The Left Alliance has blasted what it sees as India’s semi-colonial relationship with Nepal, and Oli used symbolic attacks against India and made multiple trips to China throughout the election.

He even warned that the India-Nepal Peace and Friendship Treaty of 1950, which forms the basis of the two countries’ close political and economic ties, would be discontinued under the new government.

Oli’s government is likely to prioritize trade relations with China. For instance, the new government plans to support a large-scale hydropower project awarded to a Chinese contractor—a deal from which the previous government had pulled away, likely under pressure from India. In January 2018, Nepal Telecom and China Telecom Global launched a collaboration to offer internet to Nepali citizens, effectively ending Nepal’s decade-long dependency on Indian telecom services. The new government also plans to continue cooperation with China on its “One Belt, One Road” initiative, Beijing’s plan to build a network of sea and land trade routes across Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Nepal hopes that involvement in the plan will open up new gateways for international trade, create employment, and offer opportunities to increase tourism.

There remains a possibility that, under Nepal’s hard-won new constitutional framework, Oli’s government is here to stay, and that

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it will be able to focus more on development than previous administrations. Considering this along with the new government’s Beijing-friendly stance, India can no longer afford to take for granted its historical ties to—and influence over— Nepal. This is especially true because China has positioned itself to take advantage of Nepalese frustration with Indian influence.

However, the Left Alliance’s strategy of alignment with Beijing has its limits. Some of the country’s links to India are deeply ingrained in its history and culture, making them very difficult, if not impossible, to dissolve. India flanks Nepal on three sides. The snowy, mountainous Himalayan border with China lacks infrastructure and is not a convenient route for trade. No degree of political and economic maneuvering can compete with these hard geographical facts.

Moreover, Oli understands that, to date, no government in Nepal has managed to sustain a hostile foreign policy toward New Delhi. In 2009, then-Prime Minister Prachanda lost his position in large part by crossing India. Some commentators also doubt how committed Oli will remain to his anti-India stance once in office, arguing that it was driven more by electoral politics than ideology. Indeed, even the Nepali Congress, historically well-inclined toward India, has struck more anti-India tones in recent years, perhaps in an attempt to capture more votes.

Given this history, a complete pivot to China may be economically expedient for Nepal, but politically unwise. Nepal cannot afford to choose one of its neighboring nations at the expense of its relationship with the other. Instead, it should leverage both nations’ interest in the country to attract investment and increase stability. Nepal has the unique opportunity to present itself as a valuable transit country between China and India, a multicultural hub for Indian and Chinese nationals, and a part of the Chinese “One Belt, One Road” initiative. By striking a balance in its relationships with China and India, Nepal can sustain a relationship with the former, maintain its deep cultural connection with the latter, and gain enough independence to mitigate economic pressure from both.

Simran Nayak ‘20 is an intended Applied Mathematics concentrator, a World Staff Writer, and the Community Engagement Director at BPR. Illustrations by Jackson Joyce.

Interview with

Liz Ellis Liz Ellis is a community spokesperson for Heifer International, a non-profit that works to solve the problems of hunger and poverty around the globe. Heifer’s unique model seeks to develop sustainable change within communities. The organization is dedicated to connecting isolated markets, gender equality, and its model of “passing on the gift.”

What is the global state of hunger and poverty right now?

Since the United Nations started the Millennium [Development] Goals (2002) with a lot of organizations working to end poverty globally, hunger has decreased considerably over the last 30 to 40 years. Before, about one in eight people lived in hunger; that number has gone down drastically. What those involved in the developmental world [say] is that hunger is one of those few [issues] we can end with continued support, continued innovation, and sustainable solutions.

How does Heifer International’s model deal with the interrelation of poverty and food access?

Heifer’s work to provide access to nutrition, community support, education, development, and training has always been a key tenet of our work. People must have access not only to tangible things such as livestock and animal protein, but also knowledge, like how to diversify vegetable crops [or] how to rebuild soil, which are necessary if people are to achieve food stability. We also work to promote access to market chains to be able to sell our client’s products, to have a diversified and steady income.

How does Heifer develop sustainability from within the communities it helps?

There is a key difference between development and aid. There are so many situations in the world…where the first thing people need [is] aid. Yet, Heifer is specific in that who we work with are people who have some access to land and possibilities for community development. Whatever dollars, funds, training, or resources we put in, we never look to be a continuous input. We try to create those foundations for communities, so then they have what they need to move on. This is what makes the difference between ending hunger and poverty, rather than making sure people are fed dayto-day. Another key element of Heifer is this idea of “passing on the gift.” Every family that receives our help enters into a contract in which they agree to pass on the same gift to another family. We have a huge majority who successfully "pass on the gift." Really almost any funded Heifer gift is passed on an average of nine times.

How is women’s empowerment incorporated into Heifer’s projects?

There can never be big answers to the world’s problems without full participation. We cannot only be working with a marginal section of society, or with just the people who traditionally have held power. In the countries where we work, this generally has been the men. When Heifer begins working with communities, we are asking communities to trust Heifer’s model and to question gender roles. At first, it takes a lot of trust. But, when women have ownership, such as over livestock, for example, or money management, the return is too hard to ignore. So, we try to form women's self-help groups that offer women a voice, and create programs that allow [women] to create small savings. This is really where we get the depth of our impact—from individual psychology and community support.

Interviewed by Jack Makari

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Legislating Letters Kazakhstan’s alphabetical experiment Only one group can orchestrate a coup with only 26 members and not a single bullet: the latin alphabet. Over the past 100 years, alphabets have ushered in remarkable change around the world. Swahili and Turkish bade goodbye to the Arabic script in favor of Romanization. Vietnamese and Korean abandoned traditional Chinese characters and adopted Latin script and the original Hangul alphabet, respectively.

Today, Kazakhstan is continuing this tradition with plans to move away from its Cyrillic script, which serves as an omnipresent reminder of life under the Soviets.

Artificial changes to a language’s script are often presented as savvy and forward-thinking. But they 10

can also be geopolitical moves aimed at asserting a new national identity, which can end up causing more harm than good. Despite this possibility, Kazakhstan has no plans to turn back on the Romanization of its alphabet.

“The Stans,” as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan are commonly known, became autonomous states after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. They are home to some of the most repressive and authoritarian regimes in the world. Largely artificial constructions of Stalin, who sought to incorporate Central Asia into his vast empire, they have little national culture or cohesion.

While the Russian language dominated Central Asia during Soviet times, the

national languages of each of these Soviet Socialist Republics (SSRs) maintained prominence while also embracing the Russian Cyrillic alphabet. Upon independence, however, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan have attempted to adopt the Latin alphabet instead. Now, Kazakhstan plans to do the same.

Last May, President Nursultan Nazarbayev signed Decree Number 569, instituting plans to move from the Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet by 2025.

The decree is arbitrary, unnecessary, and ill-fated, especially given the inefficacy of similar policies in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. The autocratic leader cited the need to simplify the Kazakh language and make Kazakh citizens more digitally literate, but both

arguments are easily refuted. Kazakh, when written in Cyrillic, has 42 characters—33 from Russian and nine unique letters. These letters represent a wide variety of unique sounds that cannot be accommodated in print if the language is compressed to the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet.

Nazarbayev believes he has a solution to this problem: the apostrophe. Rather than employ umlauts and unique derivations of Latin letters as other Turkic languages have done, he insists that using the apostrophe will be sufficient for representing nuances in pronunciation. Out of all the shortcomings of Romanization, this policy has generated the most resentment from Kazakh citizens.

Reformed Kazakh, it seems, will be dismembered by apostrophes, so much so that even the official name of Kazakhstan—Qazaqstan Respy’bli’kasy—will be butchered. In addition to the aesthetic implications, internet users are deeply bothered: Hashtags, after all, don’t allow for punctuation. Nazarbayev’s attempt to make his language fit for the digital age has backfired.

Defects in Kazakh would not be fixed

by Latin letters. Both Russian and Kazakh are considered official languages in the country. In Kazakhstan’s last census in 2009, 85 percent of the population reported being fluent in Russian, compared to 62 percent for Kazakh. If Nazarbayev’s goal is to increase the accessibility and usage of Kazakh, shifting away from the alphabet of the nation’s most widely-spoken language is counterproductive.

Similar linguistic legislation in other Central Asian countries has predictably had limited success. Immediately after gaining independence, Uzbekistan mandated its transition to the Latin alphabet with a 1993 law. Intended to be fully implemented by 2010, the effort has largely failed: Day-to-day life in Uzbek society remains dominated by Cyrillic writing, indicating that Central Asian populations are resistant to legally-mandated linguistic alterations. Russian, considered the lingua franca of Central Asia, is not going anywhere.

Artificial changes to a language’s script are often presented as savvy and forward-thinking. But they can also be geopolitical moves aimed at asserting a new national identity, which can end up causing more harm than good.

The Latin alphabet holds little cultural significance for Kazakhs. In fact, no written script does. Kazakh originated as a spoken language and was first recorded in Arabic script in the 10th century when Islam spread to Central Asia. Only in the 1800s was Kazakh officially standardized with Arabic writing, and even then it was used mainly by

elites and intellectuals. Upon Kazakhstan’s incorporation as an SSR, Kazakh was briefly switched to the Latin alphabet in 1927, until Stalin directed that all languages in the USSR be written in Cyrillic in order to create a homogenized Soviet identity. In a sense, written Kazakh is a language rooted in appropriation, its scripts always manipulated by the Central Asian hegemon.

The most compelling rationale for Nazarbayev’s decree is geopolitical. Central Asian languages are Turkic, and both Stalin’s incorporation of the Stans as SSRs and his insistence on Cyrillic were manifestations of paranoia about a pan-Turkic movement.

Now, after the fall of the USSR, the Cyrillic alphabet is an emblem of connection to Russia. Nazarbayev has labeled Kazakhstan’s usage of the Cyrillic alphabet as political; his new policy has similar motivations.

Adrienne Dwyer, a linguistic anthropologist at the University of Kansas, characterizes Nazarbayev’s move as “drawing a kind of ideological border between [the former SSRs] and itself.” This is paradoxical, since “[Kazakhstan] has close ties with all of these units.”

Dwyer sees this language policy as Kazakhstan’s effort to seek psychological independence. The new writing system is primarily an attempt at national rebranding and reassertion, though its intended audience is unclear. It is possible that Nazarbayev is returning to his Turkic roots and orienting himself towards Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s authoritarian Turkey. Turkey, after all, was the first state to recognize Kazakhstan’s independence in 1991 and has tense relations with Russia.

Whatever the motivation, Kazakh nationalists and pan-Turkists are thrilled by the decision; Azerbaijani Turkologists are confident that Kazakhstan’s adoption of the Latin script will “greatly facilitate mutual understanding between the Turkic-speaking peoples.”

But their excitement may soon recede. Nazarbayev’s attempt at Kazakhification through alphabet reform is poised to backfire. Kazakhstan and Russia are still deeply connected. Any attempt to assert a national Kazakh identity will be stifled if the Kazakh language is made inaccessible to well over a third of Kazakhstan’s population. While the international image goals of a Kazakh transformation may have been achieved, they will serve only to further purge the Central Asian republic of an already declining national ethos–thereby eroding, rather than solidifying, a common Kazakh identity.

Allison Meakem ‘20 is an intended Political Science and Middle East Studies concentrator and a World Section Manager at BPR. Illustration by Ellen He.

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IRRIGATING INJUSTICE Contradiction and inequality in Israel’s water system For decades, Israel has received international praise for its water conservation and management techniques. Using methods such as drip irrigation, desalination, advanced metering, and wastewater recycling, Israel has managed to turn its desert climate into a veritable oasis—even exporting water to neighboring nations. But in stark contrast to the water availability that Israeli citizens enjoy, people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (oPt) have severely limited access to water. Israel must grapple with the environmental injustice ingrained in its water system in order to serve as the international model it strives to be.

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the average Palestinian in the West Bank has access to only 73 liters of water per day, in comparison to the 240 to 300 liters available to the average Israeli. Palestinians have limited access to the waters of the oPt: Israel has laid claim to over 80 percent of the yield of the Mountain Aquifer—the largest aquifer in the region— despite most of it being located within the West Bank. Palestinians have been largely cut off from access to the Jordan River since the Six-Day War, and the Coastal Aquifer located in Gaza has become so polluted by untreated sewage that only 5 to 10 percent of it remains potable. Construction of the Israeli West Bank barrier has separated many Palestinians from access to fertile lands and these water sources.

Eighty percent of the barrier has been constructed within Palestinian territory—rather than along the border—leaving many villages separated from their water resources. Furthermore, the Israeli army has destroyed water cisterns and tanks used by farmers and households, despite the historical effectiveness of these water-holding devices.

Due to a lack of infrastructure, dearth of available water, and the destruction of water containers, many Palestinians rely on trucks to bring in water.

This imported water is often 15 to 20 times more expensive than piped water, an inordinate expense for the 80 percent of Gaza residents who require charitable assistance to afford their basic living expenses.

The water brought in by these trucks is typically used solely for drinking, leaving many without water for other basic tasks. Further intensifying this issue, there are over 500 military checkpoints located in the oPt, which can delay drivers and leave villages without water for their crops, livestock, and everyday lives for days at a time.

Israel attempts to justify these harsh restrictions with political rhetoric about national security. In a 1998 speech, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “when I talk about the importance to Israel’s security, this is not an abstract concept… It means that a housewife in Tel Aviv can open the tap and there’s water running to it, and it’s not been dried up because of a rash decision that handed over control of our aquifers to the wrong hands.” Unfortunately, these vague ideological and security concerns have

translated into a daily struggle for Palestinian water access. The Israeli government claims that giving Palestinians access to the water within their own territory would lead to excessive pumping and pollution of these reserves and thereby threaten Israeli security. Yet, the amount of water currently pumped from the Mountain Aquifer—80 percent of which goes to Israel—far exceeds its sustainable yield.

Control over water can be used as a geopolitical tactic of oppression and intimidation.

Control over water can be used as a geopolitical tactic of oppression and intimidation in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Limited access to water is used to encourage Palestinians to abandon homes and villages. Article 11 (1) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, to which Israel is party, establishes the right to quality, accessible water for all people.

However, Israel is failing to uphold its commitment to protect these rights for all people, not just all Israeli citizens.

Today, we need to rethink global water use. As climate change accentuates the stress on worldwide water systems, nations need to work together to find solutions. Israel’s success has shown that water systems can thrive in the driest of regions, and its techniques for water conservation should be shared. But technologically effective systems aren’t enough: Sustainable water solutions must incorporate equal access for all. As long as water access is still restricted in the oPt, Israel cannot continue to justify its position as a model for water sustainability.

Brianna McFadden ‘20 is an Environmental Science concentrator.

Illustration by Mackay Hare.

Interview with

Alissa Rubin How has your approach to reporting changed since you started covering conflicts?

A significant segment of my life was as a Washington reporter covering Congress. That knowledge of how things work turned out to be incredibly useful in covering the US role in both Iraq and Afghanistan. In both countries, the US brought a “mini Foggy Bottom” on the Tigris to Iraq. We brought an American template, a Washington template, a way of thinking that was very familiar to me from Washington. I think understanding who was going to be in control, who had power, and how much they were going to be answerable to DC is a very important part of how I think about covering things. I still have that, although, today, under a very different administration from those that have come before, there is simply less engagement and less effort to impose an American gestalt, if you will, on foreign places.

Was there a change in Iraqi or Afghan perceptions of America from President Bush to President Obama?

I didn’t really see a big change. This is one place where it is important to look at it from the ground up. If you are living in Iraq or Afghanistan, or name your country, when it is at war, and the United States is an actor in that war, your impression of them is really going to be driven by which side you’re on.

Are they helping your side or are they against it? You’re always going to have a bunch of people who are opponents of the United States’ position who have been bombed and killed and had their houses destroyed. They’re going to be pretty angry and resentful and form guerilla groups and some of them will become terrorists. If you’re on the other side, you will be grateful, and you’ll like [the US] because they helped you win. I think where you’ll see more of a change is something like with the relationship with Saudi [Arabia]. Under Bush, you had quite a strong liaison with the kingdom. You had a strong liaison with the Gulf, and much more wariness of Iran. Under Obama, there was the reluctant, sometimes chilly, but nonetheless rapprochement that led to the deal on nuclear weapons. That’s the difference. You see it more in those places.

Has the level of trust in America as a peace broker changed during the time you have covered American wars?

I think there is very little trust left. The trust has just steadily declined. We started out with a trust deficit because of our relationship with Israel, which in the Middle East is very unpopular. It has declined further because of different choices we’ve made in terms of who we’ve backed. But, I think now the United States is seen as having deserted Iraq at a crucial moment. [The United States] is not trustworthy in terms of being a steady friend. It is seen as not having done what it said it was going to do in Syria with the “red line” discussion. It has put in place and backed a series of corrupt figures in different countries. And that is a very serious problem for us that has not been grappled with sufficiently. We have participated in corrupt activities, for extremely good reasons, but nonetheless, the perception is that we are not to be trusted any more than any other powerful entity.

Alissa Rubin currently works as the Paris bureau chief of The New York Times.

In 2016, she won the Pulitzer Prize for “thoroughly reported and movingly written accounts giving voice to Afghan women who were forced to endure unspeakable cruelties.” She covered health care, abortion, and taxes in Washington before becoming a conflict journalist, working as the Los Angeles Times bureau chief in the Balkans and then its co-bureau chief in Baghdad. From 2007 until 2013 she reported in Iraq and Afghanistan for The New York Times, serving as the Afghanistan bureau chief for four years. In 2014, she was seriously injured in a helicopter crash in Kurdistan.

Interviewed by Josh Waldman

WHEN HOPE RUNS DRY Lessons from Cape Town’s water crisis August 27, 2018, termed Day Zero, is the day Cape Town's reservoirs are projected to dip so low that they will be unable to provide potable water for all but essential services. After that, the city's residents will be directed to over 200 collection points to pick up water rations, which officials fear will lead to civil unrest. If there is any silver lining, it is that Cape Town provides an ominous lesson on natural disaster preparedness in light of anthropogenic climate change. Governments in the Mediterranean and in semi-arid regions should take note, using Cape Town’s failures as a warning to spur the development and improvement of their own water management plans.

Cape Town’s water problem was first identified as a threat to the city’s long-term survival nearly 30 years ago and is the result of years of inadequate infrastructure planning. In 1990, the South African Water Research Commission (WRC) reported that water supplies for the city would dry up by 2007 and recommended that the country begin examining options for wastewater reclamation. However, despite the construction of a new reservoir, the city’s water supply has expanded by only 15 percent since 1995. In the same period, the population of the city has increased 79 percent, exacerbating the gap between expected water supply and demand. Despite the population boom

and long-standing concerns that the city would run dry, Cape Town's government was reluctant to limit water consumption in any way; plans to expand and diversify water sources were not scheduled to go into effect until 2020. Even after three consecutive years of drought caused by El Niño, city officials—while warning residents of the need to preserve water—did not consider punitive tariffs for those who exceeded the usage limits until January 2018, after the disaster was already apparent. It is no wonder that the city’s inhabitants, left to use water with little regulation, drained the region’s reservoirs.

The economic and humanitarian cost of this disaster make the imperative to prevent this situation from repeating itself in other places is clear. Although the mistakes of Cape Town’s administration have led to an insoluble crisis on the horizon, they can also provide a road map for disaster prevention to the rest of a world grappling with the fallout from climate change.

The Cape Town crisis highlights the importance of conducting and acting upon long-term needs assessments. Even in climates at a lower risk of running dry, governments run projections of water needs and trends based on population.

In Cape Town, this type of projection indicated that the city needed an increased water supply;

Dam Level (%)

Total Dam Levels For Cape Town’s “Big 6” Dams (January 2012 to February 2018)

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Date

however, the local government was slow to enact policies that would expand water availability in non-traditional ways, such as desalinating seawater or increasing the use of recycled wastewater.

Instead, officials opted to build another reservoir.

In other regions where projected water need is greater than estimated availability, governments must expand water supply beyond traditional methods.

With the threat of civil unrest looming in the aftermath of the taps being shut off, it is clear that a long-term investment in water infrastructure would have been worthwhile in Cape Town.

One of the most successful alternative water sourcing methods is the use of recycled wastewater, known as greywater. This practice, recommended for the city in the 1990 WRC report, has been implemented in a number of locales across the globe at various scales. In Australia, fear that the country’s largest agricultural area would become unusable prompted a multimillion dollar investment in greywater implementation, including subsidies for citizens who implemented personal permanent greywater systems. The technology is now used in most Australian cities. And in a pilot study in Haifa, Israel, researchers concluded that greywater reuse for toilets alone would decrease urban water requirements by 10 to 25 percent.

Both implementations provide models for using greywater to lessen the burden on principal water sources such as reservoirs.

Additional freshwater can be procured through desalination of seawater, a common practice in many countries and one that Cape Town

has begun to implement. Desalination plants in the California cities of Santa Barbara and Carlsbad provide 30 and 10 percent of each city's freshwater needs, respectively. But despite the apparent promise to turn seawater into a resource that can be used for drinking, bathing, and other needs, desalination comes with considerable environmental concerns. The most common method creates about one gallon of freshwater for every two of seawater and dumps the concentrated brine byproduct back into the ocean at the end of desalination, to the detriment of local marine life. Furthermore, both desalination and greywater recycling projects are costly to the governments running them.

Such complications with increasing water supply through nontraditional methods underscore the importance of decreasing water demand through better public restrictions on water usage. This was perhaps the most dramatic failure in Cape Town: Residents watered lawns and filled swimming pools despite years of drought, and the government did little to prohibit such practices.

This past January, Cape Town’s government finally set water use standards and publicly shamed those who exceeded recommended water usage by publishing a map of the city showing which areas were complying with the new standards. More recently, the government has explored taxing those who exceed the daily water usage limits after its request to reduce usage without an associated consequence failed to meaningfully lower consumption. Indeed, governments attempting to reduce consumption should look to tariff-linked water restrictions that punish overuse. Water conservation should also be aided by awareness, and a complete water management plan must include educating the public about the issue.

Though both conservation and supply-expanding efforts may seem superfluous to governments in areas where water scarcity is not an immediate issue, they are actually crucial.

Government officials in Cape Town failed to heed repeated warnings that they needed to realign water supply with consumption, and the city is now paying the price. With the threat of civil unrest looming in the aftermath of the taps being shut off, it is clear that a long-term investment in water infrastructure would have been worthwhile in Cape Town. For the city’s residents, there is little upside to the impending crisis, but Cape Town serves as an example for the necessity of governments at every level to design better water management programs. After all, an ounce of prevention is worth gallons of cure.

Emily Yamron ‘20 is a Public Health concentrator and an Associate Editor at BPR. Infographics by Tyler Jiang.

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A FA I T H

REPRESSED

The future of Chinese Christians

When the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took power in China in 1949, approximately a million Christians lived in the country. In contrast to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which allowed some churches to remain open, the CCP under Mao Zedong pursued an aggressively atheist policy as part of its Marxist agenda.

Mao attempted to snuff out religion at its roots, destroying churches, mosques, and synagogues: No religious establishment was safe. Yet in 1979, three years after Mao’s death, the CCP released an internal report revealing that despite more than three decades of persecution, China’s Christian population had tripled to more than three million.

Chinese Christians have been forced to worship out of the view of the state, turning to underground churches, houses, hotels, and even factory floors as informal and inconspicuous religious gathering spaces. Yet, today, though estimates are disputed, the Chinese Christian population has proliferated. Publicly, the CCP insists that no more than 25 million Chinese Protestants exist; privately, internal memos have tallied the figure to be as high as 130 million. The Pew Research Center pegs the total number of Catholics and Protestants at 67 million. These estimates suggest that the religious cohort is surging: Purdue University sociologist Fenggang Yang predicts that China will have the largest Christian population in the world by 2030.

Responding to this growth, the CCP has entered into negotiations with the Vatican to normalize relations with the Catholic Church. As part of their agreement, China will install state-sponsored bishops with the approval of the Vatican, replacing bishops who previously ran the underground churches, in an attempt to legitimize Christianity in the country. These negotiations, coming 67 years after the Holy See and China first broke off relations, indicate that Xi Jinping’s government is at least willing to publicly embrace Christianity.

The deal, however, would not benefit either party. A budding relationship with the Vatican may ostensibly suggest otherwise, but the CCP is still aggressively attempting to curtail Christian activity. In the past two years, Xi’s administration has embarked on a mission to remove crosses from churches across the country, closing thousands of churches to destroy this emblem of Christian faith. The remaining state-sanctioned churches now have video cameras inside, recording preachers to ensure they stick to a socialist and distinctly Chinese interpretation of Scripture. Such measures have pushed Christians further underground.

By simultaneously pursuing policies of restriction and reconciliation, Xi undermines both of those goals. Negotiations with the Vatican will be ineffective unless China loosens its restrictions on Catholics; if the persecution continues, any deal will be seen as illegitimate. Cardinal

Joseph Zen, the former Archbishop of Hong Kong, has further criticized the deal for “selling out” Chinese Catholics. Underground priests have argued that the deal will actually reduce religious freedom. Their parishioners have shared similar worries. Some believe the state will try to co-opt Catholicism into the state as it did with Buddhism, presenting a weak facsimile of the real religion.

Christianity has a long history of rebounding stronger than ever in the face of oppression.

Religious believers have reason to be concerned. In the past year, as China has pursued normalization, it has also started to target underground congregations even more intensely.

Worshippers who spread religious information or hold services in their homes have been hit with hard fines. Even as the deal with the Vatican has moved forward, a number of priests have been placed under surveillance and arrest. Bishop Guo, one of the current underground religious leaders in China, spent 20 days in detention over the past year.

In its eagerness to normalize relations and tout a global spread of Catholicism, the Vatican has ignored critics and has continued closeddoor negotiations. But as the discontent among common parishioners demonstrates, the grassroots remain wary. Ultimately, an agreement that does not satisfy the underground church will not eliminate it: No decree imposed from above—unless it comes from the heavens—can stop believers from practicing according to their conscience.

Christianity has a long history of rebounding stronger than ever in the face of oppression. In the early days of the Church, the Roman Emperor Decius decided to eradicate Christianity, forcing Christians to perform animal sacrifices or die. Many chose death, and their martyrdom helped to spread the religion. Less than 60 years later, Christianity had grown into the dominant religion of the Roman Empire.

In 2014, a church demolition in Wenzhou became a rallying point for Christians in the region. A human chain physically blocked the destruction crew, unifying Christian worshippers in broad daylight against those who were denying their religious freedom. Such acts of resistance show that Xi’s efforts to quash Christianity won’t happen without a fight. Unless China can strike a deal with the Vatican that ends persecution instead of merely recognizing the religion, the crosses will continue to fall, but the believers will continue to rise.

Mike Danello ‘20 is an intended Political Science concentrator and an Associate Editor, World Staff Writer, and Data Associate at BPR. Illustrations by Eliza von Zerneck

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Banking on Avocados Brionne Frazier Cracking down on Mexican Cartels

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A Seat at the Table Joe Hinton Addressing Providence’s lack of restaurant diversity

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Milking Marriage Grant MacFaddin Forced marriage and famine in South Sudan

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Lab to Table Christian Hanway The promising future of artificial meat

Banking on Avocados Cracking down on Mexican cartels

Last year, millionaire real estate mogul Tim Gurner told 60 Minutes Australia that millennials are blowing potential savings on “buying smashed avocado for $19.” While hyperbolic, Gurner’s comments highlight the avocado’s place in the pantheon of food fads. Trendy neighborhoods and Instagram feeds across the United States are replete with avocado toast and similar homages to the fruit. The avocado boom has largely been attributed to the lifting of many NAFTA restrictions that previously prevented agricultural imports from Mexico. Since the policy change, the avocado has become a hot commodity,

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and US demand for the crop has continued to grow. As of 2016, the US was responsible for the consumption of 80 percent of the production of avocados in Mexico, and farmers saw $2.2 billion in profit from avocados alone. This spike in demand has proven lucrative to Mexican farmers, and the rise in value of avocados has caught the attention of Mexico’s most notorious drug cartels. Last October, Reforma reported that avocado farmers in Mexico were being forced to give a percentage of their profits to cartels or risk violence against themselves and their families.

Organized crime syndicates using cash crops to diversify their income is nothing new. Mexican drug cartels have extorted lime farmers in the past, and the Sicilian mob in Italy rose to prominence through the extortion of lemon growers in the 19th century. US officials have long sought to combat cartels by stifling US appetite for illegal goods— Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in a talk in Austin, Texas that “US demand for drugs drives this violence”—but such an approach is no longer effective given cartels’ expansions into legitimate industries such as avocado growing. Efforts to fight cartels must stop focusing so much on the products themselves, and instead turn to directly attacking their financing. If the money stops flowing, so will the illicit goods.

The avocado industry in the Mexican state of Michoacan demonstrates the devastating reach of the cartels. In the 1980s, the avocado was the largest cash crop in the region, and the profitable industry quickly became a primary target of the Los Caballeros Templarios cartel. By some estimates, the cartel makes $150 million each year from the local avocado industry, now controlling 10 percent of orchards in the state.

Using this income, the cartel has consolidated its power in gaining control over the police and the courts.

Millions of dollars from drug cartels have been laundered through big banks, leaving their sources untraceable.

Vigilante groups have developed in various towns in retaliation to cartels’ statelike control over the region. These groups— whose membership is comprised of avocado growers—function like watchdog organizations. Members patrol the farms, report suspicious activity, and are funded by their towns and by other growers. The Mexican government has gone so far as to deputize vigilante groups, with great success in small towns.

This past January, NPR reported that these avocado watches managed to effectively remove cartel influence from Michoacan.

But, while vigilantism may work for smaller communities, this approach is not realistic on a larger scale.

Currently, many strategies to counter cartels focus on the illicit products themselves: These include securing the border, criminalizing drug use, and punishing distribution. While increased border security can help to cut off cartel drugs before they ever enter the US, cartels’ expansion into foods, such as avocados and limes, makes it much harder to stop cartel business. Another approach seeks to attack drug cartels by decreasing demand for the products in question. However, even if demand for avocados were to decline, the cartels have a sophisticated enough network—and people have sufficient appetites—that another lucrative food would likely pop up and be commandeered.

A scalable solution needs to focus on weakening the cartels themselves—not on the demand for the products they sell—to have any hope of loosening the cartels’ industry strangleholds. With cartels’ expansion into agriculture, policies must prevent the structural monetary operations of these organizations, not just the products’ movements.

The best policies do not treat the violence on a case-by-case, town-by-town, or product-by-product basis. Rather, policymakers should redirect their efforts to curtail cartels’ access to financial resources.

These cartels are able to expand at high rates because big banks, such as Wells Fargo, fail to apply anti-laundering policies to the billions of dollars’ worth of transactions that occur behind their doors. If properly followed, these laws and regulations could significantly hinder the cartels’ ability to maintain their complex system of smuggling and intimidation.

Cartel operations are financed primarily using big banks, not back-door cash payments or seedy investments. In 2011, the Guardian reported that the Sinaloa trafficking cartel purchased a private plane carrying 5.7 tons of cocaine using an account from the bank Wachovia, which has since been absorbed by Wells Fargo. In this instance, it didn’t matter whether the plane was carrying cocaine or avocados: The bank did not follow anti-laundering policies, which allowed the cartel to transport products and people internationally and expand its influence.

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This phenomenon is not limited to a handful of banks. In 2012, HSBC paid a $1.9 billion fine for knowingly laundering cartel cash and was placed on probation by the US Department of Justice. In February, the European bank Rabobank was fined $369 million by the US government for failing to track cash deposits. Large deposits are correlated with escalating cartel violence in Mexico, and lax banking policies help enable their activity. Millions of dollars from drug cartels have been laundered through big banks, leaving their sources untraceable. Though cartels have other ways to obfuscate their illegal activity, such transactions provide the easiest path for egregious amounts of cash to evade oversight.

These financial institutions provide assurance to cartel organizers that their money is safe and anonymous.

Unless policy can successfully weaken the world’s biggest cartels, other industries will be quick to fall into the cartels' pit.

Because cartels are adaptable, cutting them off from banks will not put them out of business completely. They will ultimately shift their financing options to alternative money laundering schemes, such as horse racing or family businesses.

But these methods are not capable of effectively and anonymously transferring billions of dollars of cash under the radar.

Therefore, placing stricter anti-laundering policies on banks—and ensuring proper enforcement of said policies—will limit the influence of cartels. The goal of the policy is not to immediately bankrupt these cartels, but rather to force them to scale down their operations to a level that is more manageable for governments and citizens to address on a local level.

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Martin Woods, the former anti-laundering officer for Wachovia Bank stated, “the drug industry has two products: money and suffering.” Cartels are interested in whatever industry brings in money, and the nationwide extortion of avocado farmers is a symptom of organized crime syndicates in the same way drug violence is. These products’ profitability alone does not grow these cartels. Rather, banks that legitimize billions of dollars’ worth of cartel transactions enable these evil empires to effectively finance their operations. The exploitation of cash crops is a demonstration of the opportunism that underpins organized crime, and unless policy can successfully weaken the world’s biggest cartels, other industries will be quick to fall under their influence.

Agricultural crime is the result of drug syndicates’ opportunism. Unless policy can successfully weaken the world’s biggest cartels, other industries will be quick to fall into the cartels’ pit.

Brionne Frazier ‘20 is an intended International Relations concentrator and a US Staff Writer at BPR. Illustrations by Sel Lee.

Interview with

Ernie Stevens III Ernie Stevens III is a recently elected council member on the Business Committee of Oneida Nation in Wisconsin. The Business Committee is Oneida’s governing body. Councilman Stevens was named one of the National Center for American Indian Enterprise Development’s Native American 40 Under 40 award winners for 2015.

Stevens, a Green Bay resident, is a media producer and co-host of the “Native Report,” a PBS series that celebrates Native American culture.

What is the meaning and significance of food sovereignty?

I think it’s important to just overall understand that sovereignty is a birthright. We’re born into sovereignty as a people to govern ourselves and to make decisions that affect not only ourselves, but the next generation. It’s being able to make decisions for the betterment of yourself and your people. There’s a lot of ways to define food sovereignty that might change depending on what region you’re from, what nation you are, what your history and origin story are, your creation story…there are a lot of ways of looking at it as Indian people, and it connects to how we give thanks. With Oneida, we are thankful for everything we have.

We thank the Creator. We are thankful for our three sisters—the corn, bean, and the squash—and we thank all we eat. There are speeches that talk about how important it is for us to honor our Mother Earth. We thank the Thunders for bringing the rain, for nurturing our grounds, for bringing her plants. That process is so deep and goes back to the beginning of our time. It’s really impossible from that standpoint to explain to you what food sovereignty means. But I can at least say at this point, to us here in Oneida at 2018, it’s about maintaining our cultural ways.

It’s about growing our food the way we’ve always grown it.

By choosing to utilize modern technologies and by choosing to utilize traditional historic methods and choosing any and all ways to maintain the food systems of the nation. That’s one way, not the only way, but that’s one way to define food sovereignty.

It’s not just to provide the community with food but to provide the community with the ability to be growers, processors, and consumers, and to be able to, as families, neighborhoods, and individuals, utilize food sovereignty in our own circles.

Is the notion of food sovereignty inextricably tied to indigenous communities?

The Oneida are not environmentalists. There’s no word for environmentalist. We’re not farmers. There’s no word for farmer.

Because those things are just built in. Food sovereignty reminds us that when we’re born, in our DNA, there’s information passed down from generation to generation. Starting from the beginning, we have this knowledge. The minute we are born, we’re already farmers. We’re already stewards of the environment. The Thunders, for example—one of their duties is to protect Mother Earth from damage and adverse deeds and entities. They bring the rains and they bring the thunders—it’s literally their job description. That goes to the beginning of time, before humans

were even on earth. Call it ecology, call it what you want, but that’s the knowledge that’s in our DNA when we’re born. We’ll learn the science of it and the most effective modern ways to protect our environment—we’ll learn how to do that. The rest is just built into who we are. So we teach ourselves, and bring that knowledge out of ourselves. There’s a culture to it, there’s a science to it, and there’s a physiological aspect to it. That helps define what it means to us as indigenous people. How we grow food and how we deal with things that affect that.

Can and should indigenous food practices be adopted outside of indigenous communities?

Indigenous food practices could save the world. I really believe that. Not just Oneida practices, not just Native Americans.

That’s indigenous communities all over the world. Some of those communities go back to the early Scottish, the early Irish…This isn’t just “dirt folks” I’m talking about here. If we went back to the indigenous processes of growing food, harvesting, storing them…Modern technology has definitely been a help.

But if electricity went away, if all the satellites went away, if modern technology went away…Through whatever means and processes, are we prepared to go back to day one? Indigenous communities sure are. We have processes of smoking, creating storage in the ground to keep foods cold. There’s different things in indigenous practices that will never go away. If you take away money, if you take everything away, who’s going to survive? The world would go crazy, and who’s going to protect it? This goes towards a direction that we’re not prepared to talk about right now, but that’s as extreme as I like to take it. Because we’re prepared to live and thrive from an indigenous perspective. "Can we protect and maintain that?" is the question in this particular world. I don’t know that right now. But I do know that we can at least instill knowledge and prepare ourselves the best we can in hopes the world can come together and agree. You’ve got Monsanto and you’ve got all these adverse factors that come into play that we are competing against that say, “this is the answer.” And it’s not the answer. Indigenous food lifestyles, food sovereignty— that’s the answer. That’s how the world comes together.

That’s how we save the world.

Interviewed by Alexis Viera

A SEAT AT THE TABLE Addressing Providence’s lack of restaurant diversity In August 2017, Black Sheep opened its doors to the Providence community. The restaurant’s contributions to the local food scene were myriad. Black Sheep brought a fresh social atmosphere to one of New England’s most prominent food cities, hosting regular events such as bingo and drag brunches. But these enticing social events are not the most notable aspects of Black Sheep’s opening. Despite the diversity of food establishments that have recently opened in Providence, Black Sheep is one of the only prominent Black-owned restaurants in the city.

Just east of Black Sheep, the College Hill neighborhood is another area of restaurant growth. New businesses just off Brown University’s campus are overseen by the Thayer Street District Management authority, which oversees the establishment of new restaurants on Thayer Street in an effort to attract new businesses and revamp the neighborhood. Although the influx of new food options builds on Providence’s existing culinary diversity, food options representative of Black Americans’ culture remain minimal in urban restaurant districts despite Black people making up 16 percent of Providence’s population.

This lack of African-American restaurants is not an aberration in New England. Many of the region’s major cities, such as Stamford, Providence, and Boston, have a dearth of Blackowned restaurants. De facto segregation, redlining, and discriminatory drug laws are some of the obstacles black people face when attempting to start businesses in the US. The Northeast, despite its progressive reputation, is no exception. Alongside more salient examples of racism sits a deep history of oppression in restaurant ownership.

President Nixon, a purported advocate for increasing Black capitalism, initiated

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federal loan programs to spark Black restaurant ownership in urban communities via fast food corporations. These policies rightly aimed at enabling more Black economic agency, but they had perverse outcomes. Although Black restaurant ownership increased, it did so only among unhealthy, non-traditional fast food restaurants. In this case, the (often white) corporate owners reaped the majority of the profits, making Black restaurant ownership a reality in name only.

Gentrification has posed a further challenge to Black restaurants, which often rely on neighborhood proximity and foot traffic. Activists such as John Templeton and Frederick E. Jordan Sr. have responded with the creation of National Black Business month.

This effort builds on the legacy of San Francisco’s George W. Davis, who in 1979 helped initiate the spread of Black restaurant awareness and consumer activity through the Black Cuisine Festival. Since then, San Francisco has become a leading city for Black restaurant activism. In 2014, the San Francisco Chronicle helped to popularize a Black Restaurant Week by publishing a list of Black restaurants with varied styles of service and cuisine. This past August, 15 such Black Restaurant Weeks were planned across the nation in cities such as Memphis, Portland, and Baltimore.

Although Black restaurant ownership increased, it did so only among unhealthy, non-traditional fast food restaurants.

Drawing upon this successful track record, Providence and other communities in New England should institute Black Restaurant Weeks and related promotions to boost recogni-

Predominant Origin of Foreign-Born Population in Providence

tion and development of Black-owned restaurants. As Providence looks to enhance its status as a premiere food city, it should recognize the pragmatism of supporting Black-owned restaurants. Riding the national trend of Black Restaurant Weeks can help mitigate gentrification’s dispersive effects and the lasting burden of discrimination on today’s Black restaurateurs. Government investment in Black ownership can foster Black agency when it doesn’t center around profit-seeking corporations. When entrepreneurs of the African diaspora can access capital and encouragement to create meaningful culinary experiences, culturally eclectic social spaces with amazing food emerge. This kind of activism can be

combined with events at existing institutions seeking to acknowledge and rectify historical injustices, such as Brown University’s Center for Slavery and Justice and Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America. If Brown and the Thayer Street District Management Authority are committed to diversifying and revamping the Providence community’s food economy, then supporting a Black Restaurant Week this August is the first place to start.

Joe Hinton ‘20 is a Political Science and Literary Arts concentrator and a Culture Staff Writer and Copy Editor at BPR. Infographics by Julia Gilman.

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MILKING MARRIAGE Forced marriage and famine in South Sudan

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n South Sudan, the causes of famine run deeper than food shortages. Since gaining independence from its northern neighbor in 2011, South Sudan has seen its long-sought peace dissolve rapidly into bitter conflict, turning the world’s youngest country into one of its most unstable.

The conflict has thrown South Sudan’s already fragile institutions into disarray and left much of the nation fearing for its safety, as government and opposition forces clash across the country.

In this climate, food has become increasingly scarce. Crops are looted, roads are destroyed, and food shipments to opposition-controlled areas are blocked by government forces.

Though it is clear that war has limited peoples’ access to food, social issues continue to fuel the acute hunger in South Sudan and perpetuate the cycle of famine and violence: polygyny—one man marrying multiple women—and forced marriages. With more than 4.8 million people, almost half the country’s population, in South Sudan facing food insecurity, many families have turned to marriage payments to put food on the table.

With hunger now gripping much of the country, activists report that South Sudanese families are coming under increased pressure to force young women and girls into marriage in order to obtain cattle, which serve as a source of food, financial security, and social status. For many young South Sudanese women and girls, marriage is not a choice but a tragic obligation.

The issue of forced marriages is as much linked to hunger and violence as it is to the unequal and abusive treatment of women.

In South Sudan, the practice of polygyny is both legal and widespread. Girls as young as 12 years old are pushed into marriages with men many years older, many of whom meet bride price demands by marrying off women in their own family. Educated women are viewed as arrogant, disrespectful, and promiscuous, so families usually attempt to marry their daughters before they have completed school in order to maximize the bride price they receive.

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Unsurprisingly, these practices cause women to suffer physical and emotional abuse: Child brides can suffer acutely from the trauma of separation from their families and the expectation to engage in a sexual relationship before they are willing.

Famine has not so much created these problems as it has further skewed marriage incentives, adding fuel to an already raging fire.

In addition to threatening the wellbeing of young women in South Sudan, polygyny also perpetuates civil conflict in the region. Polygyny creates a class of unmarried, usually poorer, men.

Constrained by their socioeconomic status and inability to find wives, these men are pushed out of their home communities. With the promises of a bride and heightened social status, joining the armies of the civil war’s opposing factions becomes increasingly appealing. At times, it may seem like the only way for a young man to escape polygyny’s underclass.

International interventions in this civil war have consisted of humanitarian responses, and diplomatic and economic pressure. A recent arms embargo imposed by the United States joins other targeted sanctions, but with Russian and Chinese resistance on the Security Council, there is little hope for significant UN pressure on South Sudan. Humanitarian assistance, specifically food aid, remains the most effective international tool for alleviating the effects of the conflict. The United States has allocated over a billion dollars towards food aid—over $500 million in 2017 alone—which, along with contributions from other countries, comprises the single largest sector of international humanitarian spending on South Sudan.

Although food aid helps to alleviate food insecurity in the short term, it fails to address the underlying economics of forced marriages that contribute to the problem. A systemic imbalance in the marriage market created by polygynous marriages will continue to pull young girls out of schools and force young men into a future of instability and violence. Thus, while remaining an important immediate response to South Sudan’s humanitarian crisis, food aid falls short of

creating the meaningful social stability required for peace and prosperity in the country.

The key to a long-lasting solution is education. Families who rely on their daughters’ bride prices for security see education as a threat; they treat young women as economic objects to be married off. It is imperative for families to look toward education rather than away from it. Having a more educated female population generally leads to later marriages, lower fertility rates, lower maternal and infant mortality rates, and greater social mobility. Through education, daughters can become valuable workers who contribute to their families using their skillsets rather than through just the value of their marriage.

Challenging cultural norms requires significant commitment of time and effort, but change is possible and necessary. A unique opportunity to achieve this shift lies in pairing food aid with education; by doing so, the international community can implement targeted interventions, as aid workers decide how and where to distribute food.

Policy makers can draw inspiration from publicly and privately funded Food for Education programs, such as the US Department of Agriculture’s McGovern-Dole Program, which incentivize school attendance by providing school meals along with training to teachers and other support activities. These successes could be the model for a similar program which boosts girls’ education, challenges the practice of forced marriages, and serves as the first step toward finding a long-term solution to South Sudan’s food shortage crisis.

The situation in South Sudan is dire: The country’s civil war and its polygynous traditions have led to vicious cycle of ever-deepening hunger and violence. Both a cause and a consequence of South Sudanese forced marriage practices, the current food crisis calls for a re-evaluation of current aid efforts in the region.

Food aid, though effective in the short-run, fails to offer a sustainable, long-term solution to forced marriages and the marginalization of women in South Sudanese society. True progress will only come when both the country’s immediate and deep-rooted issues are tackled in a way that acknowledges and addresses the indivisible link between the two.

Grant MacFaddin ‘19 is an International Relations concentrator.

Illustrations by Doris Liou.

LAB TO TABLE The promising future of artificial meat

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the United States, we both love animals and love to eat them. But even as people grow more aware of the questionable practices of the meat industry, only the 3 percent of Americans who identify as vegetarians manage to resist the lure of a well-cooked burger or a sizzling strip of bacon. While numbers vary around the world, the overwhelming majority of diets are meat-oriented. What’s more, global per capita meat consumption has more than doubled between 1961 and 2007 and is expected to double again by 2050. As the meat industry grows, so too do its adverse effects on global health and the environment.

Although turning away from meat seems to suggest moving toward plant-based alternatives, the solution might lie quite far from farmlands, and instead may

be found in the laboratory.

The ballooning reliance on meat is taking its toll on the globe. It takes over 1,800 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of meat, and livestock are seriously depleting water reserves in drought-ridden areas such as Southern California. Over 26 percent of Earth’s arable land is used for grazing and feed production for the 20 billion animals being raised for consumption. Most devastatingly, cows do not just produce cheese, they also cut it: Over 14.5 percent of global greenhouse emissions come from cattle.

Meat also comes with expensive unseen costs. Those who consume high amounts of red meat are at higher risk for cancer and cardiovascular disease. These conditions burden the healthcare system and weaken the economy through lost labor

and productivity. If US consumers simply followed federal diet recommendations, health outcomes would improve enough to save the US $200 billion per year by 2050.

A blunt but misguided fix to the overreliance on meat would be to suggest mass vegetarianism.

Whether due to cultural or culinary reasons, many Americans are hesitant to give up meat. Furthermore, the majority of protein in most Americans’ diets comes from meat, and while it’s possible to substitute in protein-rich plant-based products,

Over 26 percent of Earth’s arable land is used for grazing and feed production for the 20 billion animals being raised for consumption. poor nutritional education makes meat the most obvious protein source. Luckily, technology has provided alternatives that address both the problems caused by mass animal production and those caused by cultural expectations to eat meat.

A few years ago, a test tube burger drew media attention for both its novelty and its cost. The burger, which was made by taking cattle stem cells and growing them outside of the cow, cost upwards of $300,000; however, the cost of the burger quickly plummeted. By 2017, producing 5 ounces of meat this way cost $11.36. While still well above the direct cost of regular meat, the technology is advancing rapidly, and lower prices are on the horizon. Creating meat in a lab gives producers the ability to regulate the number of different nutrients and vitamins, potentially allowing for meat that is even healthier than beef from organically raised cows. Further forays into the field could create the possibility of eliminating carcinogenic elements from meat without sacrificing flavor or nutrition. In the meantime, studies predict that growing meat in labs would cut down on the amount of land and water needed for livestock by 99 and 90 percent respectively, while emitting only 4 percent of the greenhouse gases produced by the traditional meat industry.

Another option for alternative meat lies in plant protein. Companies such as Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods have had success in manipulating protein from peas and other plants into a familiar form with the texture of meat that cooks, sizzles, and even bleeds fake blood made out of beet juice.

These companies aren’t just making run-of-the-mill veggie burgers; they are analyzing the molecular compounds of meat to find out how to perfectly replicate the sensation of biting into a juicy burger.

For example, Impossible Foods claims that heme, an iron-containing molecule found in blood, is crucial to the flavor and texture of beef. By transferring the heme-creating gene in soybeans to yeast, Impos-

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sible Foods has been able to produce heme on an industrial scale. By combining it with potato protein, wheat protein, and coconut oil, the company has managed to create authentic-tasting meat without ever touching a cow.

Despite the realistic attributes of these artificial meats, food analysts have generally seen these options more as “an opportunity for the vegetarian market” than as an appeal to the carnivorous crowd.

In order for artificial meat to have a real impact, it needs to reach beyond the 3 percent of Americans who do not eat meat.

This under-tapped market provides a crucial opportunity for the US government to protect the environment, improve health, and save money.

The government should first consider subsidizing the artificial meat industry. At first glance, this option does not seem necessary—billionaires such as Bill Gates and Richard Branson fund companies like Modern Meadow, and Beyond Meat just signed a deal with TGI Friday’s—but subsidies do much more than offset production costs. With appropriate research, subsidies can increase the supply of alternative meats and incentivize customers by further lowering the prices of these products.

The government should also consider funding advertising campaigns in support of artificial meat. Campaigns similar to the those against smoking carried out nationwide, in partnership with legislation, may help steer people away from consumption of traditional meat in favor of meat alternatives. Such a combination has proven to be effective in the past. In 1965, 42.4 percent of American adults and high school students smoked cigarettes, and by 2014, the number had dropped to 16.8 percent. After the US Surgeon General public-

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ly denounced smoking in 1964, the number of Americans who believed smoking caused cancer went up from 44 percent to 78 percent. And in 2014, the CDC started the first federally funded anti-smoking campaign. In one year, the Tips from Former Smokers campaign helped almost two million Americans attempt to quit smoking.

A similarly aggressive campaign against the overconsumption of meat could convince people to find substitutes.

As with the government’s anti-smoking campaign, government advertisements against meat should be accompanied by taxation. While factory farms may be too profitable for a tax to make a sizable impact, taxing customers may cause some to turn away from the deli and head towards something like the Beyond Meat Beast Burger. Studies suggest that a 40 percent sales tax on beef would cut consumption by 15 percent, a meaningful bump when combined other policy initiatives.

Now is not the time to mince words: The worldwide meat addiction is having disastrous effects on health, the environment, and the economy. Artificial meats are a new and surprisingly palatable solution to meat overconsumption. The government should spur its research and development to beef up a new era of ethical, healthy, and sustainable consumption.

Christian Hanway ‘20 is an Economics and Theater Arts and Performance Studies concentrator and an Associate Editor at BPR. Illustrations by Franco Zacharzewski.

Interview with

Mónica Ramírez Mónica Ramírez is a civil rights attorney, public speaker, and life-long activist who has spent the majority of her professional career defending female farmworkers. A graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Ramirez is the Co-Founder and President of Alianza Nacional de Campesinas and the Director of Gender Equity and Trabajadoras’ Empowerment for the Labor Council for Latin Council American Advancement.

What have you found to be the two greatest challenges facing farmworker women?

One of the biggest challenges would be their invisibility. For a long time, even though women were working in the fields and contributing to our economy, they were considered family migrants joining their husbands in the fields. Today, there are still farmworker women working in the fields alongside their male family members who never even receive a paycheck. When you’re made to be invisible, it is easier to exploit you. The second problem would be this issue of sexual violence in the work place. Farmworker women have reported out at much higher rates of sexual harassment than any other group of women workers in our nation. And that is because the perpetrators believe that no one sees them, no one hears them, no one cares about them, and no one is ever going to do anything to help them.

What narrative has most struck you in your work for farmworker women?

Every single one of my clients is amazing and courageous. Just the fact that they made the decision to come forward is incredible, considering everything that they’ve faced. I’ve been able to see women who have not only been able to survive, but have been able to thrive as they’ve attempted to seek justice. And the justice that they are seeking is not just for themselves but for all people. Whenever I talk to clients about what they hope for their cases, they always talk about the fact that they don’t want this to happen to anyone else. The fact that farmworker women, who are so poor and who have been made invisible by our culture and our nation, still think beyond themselves, even when they’re doing probably one of the hardest things they’ve ever done in their lives—to me, that’s striking and should be celebrated.

Can you talk about the relationship between the #MeToo and Time's Up movements and the work you do?

For the first time perhaps in our nation’s history, people have been able to see the power of farmworker women. Our members decided that it was important to speak out in solidarity with women in the entertainment industry and made the decision to publish the open letter we wrote in Time Magazine.

Our letter sparked the creation of the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, which now has raised about $20 million in only two months and has really created a cross sector movement to address sexual harassment against all workers. That was the result of the compassion of farmworker women to say to the women in the entertainment industry that we see them, that we understand, and that we are there for them. And that was also marked by the fact that farmworker women know that we are powerful, and that we are experienced enough to be able to speak on this issue.

Interviewed by Maya Fitzpatrick

LOSING POWER How austerity kept the lights off in Puerto Rico In September of 2017, Hurricanes Irma and Maria swept through Puerto Rico, taking with them hundreds of lives across the island. The hurricanes, however, were just the beginning of the crisis. Many of the people who died were not victims of the storms themselves, but of the post-hurricane failure to provide public resources, including electricity. By the end of 2017, roughly half of Puerto Rico’s residents remained in the dark. That number fell only slightly during the first months of 2018. Puerto Rico’s weak energy infrastructure is one manifestation of a broader, unnatural disaster—an economic crisis that has shaped Puerto Rico’s political life for decades and made it especially susceptible to the destruction left by the hurricanes.

Several factors have contributed to Puerto Rico’s economic fallout. Most canonical is the Jones Act, a protectionist US law passed in 1920 mandating that all vessels moving between two ports in the United States be US-owned, US-built, and US-operated. This act particularly affects US islands, such as Puerto Rico. Given that Puerto Rico imports all of its petroleum, the Jones Act is key in explaining the particularly high costs of electricity on the island. Analysts also point to the flight of US-owned transnational pharmaceutical companies from the island in the late 1990s—ravaging an industry that accounted for half of its manufacturing sector—as a cause for Puerto Rico’s economic hardship. To make matters worse, predatory investments invaded the island shortly thereafter, partly due to Puerto Rico’s decision to make federal, state, and local bonds tax exempt.

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With high import costs, failing industries, and high-interest lending, Puerto Rico’s public debt quickly spiraled out of control. Although debt data from the early 2000s isn’t particularly reliable, the island’s recorded debt climbed from $42.8 billion in 2007 to $74 billion today.

The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA), the public enterprise that controls electricity production and distribution, held $9 billion of this in 2017. Under pressure from its creditors, the Puerto Rican government has responded to its financial troubles with sweeping austerity measures, including closing public schools, limiting health spending, and decreasing funding to PREPA.

State funding has been cut across the board. This includes slashes to public sector employment, which are especially impactful given that the government is Puerto Rico’s largest employer. Between 2007 and 2016, over 70,000 government jobs were eliminated, PREPA jobs included, decreasing overall energy production on the island. Since 2009, production has fallen by over 7 percent.

Electricity Generation (MMKWH)

Rising debt and austerity measures, combined with volatile and rising oil prices, forced energy prices to swell long before the hurricane. In fact, in 2014, residential electricity prices in Puerto Rico were 2.1 times higher than average prices in the United States; industrial energy prices were a staggering 3.2 times higher.

Then came Irma and Maria, further exacerbating the extant political and economic issues that have colored Puerto Rico’s reality for decades. The hurricanes should be understood as a meaningful tipping point in the development of a crisis that began much earlier.

In late January, Puerto Rico’s governor, with support from the US-appointed Financial Oversight and Management

Board, announced plans to move forward with privatizing PREPA. Thus, the hurricanes have not only amplified the weaknesses of a crumbling electricity system, but have also permitted new levels of privatization and the weakening of the public sector more broadly. Moving forward, it’s likely that an increasing proportion of the Puerto Rican economy will be swept into private hands, further limiting what’s left of the island’s precious autonomy.

Evan Lehmann ‘19 is a Statistics concentrator and a Data Associate at BPR. Infographics by Charlotte Perez and Evan Lehmann.

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MUTUALLY ASSURED DISRUPTION How small nuclear weapons are changing the calculus of MAD

D

onald Trump’s Twitter flexing might have you think otherwise, but it’s not the size of your nuclear weapon that matters: it’s whether you use it. And although Trump’s giant nuclear button may look frightening, it might actually be the smallest nuclear weapons that pose the most potent threat to the doctrine of mutually assured destruction that underpins modern nuclear peace.

This February, the Trump administration released its Nuclear Posture Review, a document detailing its positions on a medley of nuclear issues. Among those positions is a fervent support for investing in tactical nuclear weapons, warheads that are designed for use on the battlefield and thus carry significantly lower payload than traditional nuclear weapons. The B61 Mod 10, an old US tactical nuke, can be set to a yield as low as 300 tons, 50 times less than the payload of the bomb that destroyed Nagasaki; in the 1950s—the more inventive days of the US military—a tactical nuke was designed that could yield as little as 10 tons and be fired from a Jeep.

The administration’s interest in revamping our aging arsenal of tactical nukes is couched in a sentiment familiar to nuclear wonks: We want what the Russians have. Specifically, American generals fear that in certain circumstances—particularly an armed confrontation with NATO member nations—Moscow might be willing to use its own tactical nukes to end conflict quickly and scare the West into negotiating on its terms. American military officials worry that if the US doesn’t have its own low-yield nukes, Russia could use theirs without fear of American retaliation. Since the possible US nuclear response would be escalation using a much larger warhead, Russians could be confident that the US wouldn’t respond with nukes at all. In short, the power of US nuclear weapons would prevent a proportional response.

But this type of argument downplays the chaotic nature of any potential nuclear exchange. To think that launching a smaller nuclear weapon would be less likely to cause escalation is to underestimate the gravity of using a nuke in the first place. Jeffrey Lewis,

a nuclear scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, writes that this is exactly why low-yield weapons are not more credible than their larger counterparts: “Nuclear weapons are nuclear weapons, and it seems very unlikely to me that a president is going to be confident that he can start a limited nuclear war that doesn’t become a very big one, quickly.”

After all, it’s difficult to believe that if Russian early-warning detectors were to pick up a nuclear missile launched by the US, Moscow would wait until it detonated in their homeland to measure the size of the blast before retaliating.

The US already has a better option to deter Russia's use of nuclear weapons: its staggering conventional military. Michael Krepon, a nuclear security expert and co-founder of the Stimson Institute, believes that “the way to beat tactical nuclear weapons is with overwhelming conventional firepower.” The US still has the largest conventional military force in the world by a huge margin. With support from its NATO allies, and any other countries outraged by a potential Russian first use,conventional arms would be more than enough to punish any Russian use of tactical nukes.

Best of all, sticking to conventional weapons keeps the US out of situations where it might be tempted to use a nuclear weapon first. Philip Coyle and James McK-

The administration’s interest in revamping our aging arsenal of tactical nukes is couched in a sentiment familiar to nuclear wonks: We want what the Russians have. eon, two experts at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, write that tactical nukes actually undermine deterrence and hurt US national security “by lowering the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons, making the unthinkable more likely.” Because these weapons have a less intense blast than that of traditional nuclear weapons, many military officials—including General James Cartwright, the former head

35

of the US Nuclear Forces—think of tactical nukes as deployable in battle, which could lead to massive retaliation and bloodshed.

And it’s certainly possible that the US might consider using tactical nukes in an otherwise conventional situation. During the battle of Khe Sanh,one of the most brutal engagements of the Vietnam War, US soldiers were bombarded in a Marine combat base for 77 days. President Lyndon Johnson and his generals, fearing disaster, seriously considered the deployment of

To think that launching a smaller nuclear weapon would be less likely to cause escalationis to underestimate the gravity of using a nuke in the first place. tactical nuclear weapons to end the battle.

What’s more, maintaining these weapons opens the extremely real possibility of unintentional use. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, a Russian submarine mistook an American destroyer doing a practice drill for an offensive strike. Only the dissent of a single Soviet naval officer interrupted an order to launch a nuclear-armed torpedo and stopped a chain of escalation that could have annihilated millions around the world.

Even if the prospect of the US using a nuclear weapon remains slim, investing more in tactical nukes would only heighten the nuclear anxiety felt across the world.

Proliferation of any kind strains relations between nuclear powers—particularly on the Korean peninsula—and tactical nukes are becoming a large part of the problem. Most obviously, increasing spending on nuclear weapons continues a dangerous trajectory of nuclear build-up: The recent Russian violation of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty, a US–Soviet treaty requiring the destruction of all ground-based missiles with ranges of 500 to 5500 kilometers, had experts abuzz about an accelerating nuclear arms race. Increasing spending on tactical nukes only adds fuel to the flame.

Even worse would be to send the weapons across the globe, a move the US is nevertheless considering. Late in 2017, the South Korean defense minister suggested the US move tactical nukes to the Korean peninsula, a maneuver that would inflame Kim Jong-Un’s nuclear rhetoric and legiti-

36

mize its grievances against Western aggression. It’s unclear why tactical nuclear weapons would even be encouraging to South Korea as a deterrent. If North Korea sticks to conventional belligerence, South Korea can respond with its own conventional weapons. And if Pyongyang were to escalate to a nuclear weapon, Seoul would likely turn to US intercontinental ballistic missiles to retaliate, rather than using tactical nukes.

A further problem, as Zachary Keck of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center explains, is that deploying tactical nukes to South Korea might also catalyze aggression by creating “juicy targets for North Korea to target in the event of conflict.” With the accuracy of Pyongyang’s conventional missiles higher than ever before, a Northern strike aimed at debilitating tactical nukes in the South could easily be the first step in a meltdown of peninsular relations.

Although the Cold War is long behind us, nuclear weapons are still the bedrock of modern geopolitics. The Trump administration’s move toward low-yield nuclear weapons is worrisome, and calls to distribute the weapons around the world are misguided. Certainly Trump’s desires to comfort our allies are legitimate, but developing or deploying tactical nukes seems liable to bring only a higher chance of wa.

Simply taking a hammer to his smartphone would be a far more effective (and cheaper) way to lower nuclear tensions.

Jack Glaser ‘19 is an Applied Mathematics– Economics concentrator and an Associate Editor at BPR. Illustrations by Sam Berenfield.

ENCODED INEQUITY Why recidivism risk assessments should stay out of the courtroom

AS

“smart” data-driven approaches have become increasingly common and successful in police departments across the country, a movement to import similar methods into courtrooms has gained traction. Risk assessment scores use data obtained through questionnaires or scraped from defendants’ criminal records to rate their probability of recidivism—the tendency of an offender to commit another crime. Widely used at the state level, these metrics inform a variety of decisions within the courtroom: setting bond, granting parole, and, in nine states, sentencing inmates. Risk assessments provide genuine value in the pre-sentencing phases of the criminal justice process; however, concerns about equal protection under the law and the absence of a relationship between longer sentences and lower rates of recidivism should make us wary about their use in sentencing.

In today’s crowded jails and chaotic courthouses, risk assessments are useful metrics. According to the Marshall Project, states spend more than $13 billion annually on pre-trial detention, which accounts for as many as 443,000 defendants on any given day. Yet numerous studies have shown that many of these detentions are unnecessary. The Marshall Project and Stanford professor Sharad Goel suggest that by using risk assessments designed to evaluate the flight risk of defendants, jurisdictions around the country can reduce their pre-trial detention populations by as much as 50 percent with only marginal increases in the number of defendants who fail to appear at trial. Considering that 57 percent of the $80 billion spent annually on incarceration comes from state governments, reforming the pre-trial detention process could lead to a windfall. Risk assessments can also ensure that jurisdictions’ limited resources for rehabilitation, such as re-entry programs for ex-offenders, are more responsibly allocated. Risk scores can be a valuable way to determine which inmates might benefit from strict

detention and which are already at low risk of recidivism.

Despite the potential for risk assessments to improve our justice system, the potential for misuse looms large. An investigation by ProPublica found that the process of scoring the likelihood of recidivism could implicitly encode racial bias. While questionnaires do not directly ask about race, the score-calculating algorithms target factors that are disproportionately common in communities of color, such as lack of education, uncertain job status, and childhood spent in a single-parent household. However, the conclusions of the piece are highly disputed: The Federal Probation Journal published an article detailing a laundry list of errors in the article, including the misuse of one sample of inmates from Florida, the unexplained omission of another group, and a failure to discuss standards in the field for testing the existence of bias.

Even if risk assessments are racially neutral, they are inappropriate for the sentencing process.

However, even if risk assessments are racially neutral, they are inappropriate for the sentencing process. True to their name, risk assessments evaluate only one factor that might contribute to a defendant’s sentence: risk of recidivism. On the other hand, a sentence is meant to reflect retribution, rehabilitation, and deterrence proportional to the crime being addressed in court, not for a crime an algorithm predicts may be committed in the future. Finally, there is little evidence that suggests a relationship between longer sentences and lower rates of recidivism, leaving no practical reason for why risk assessments should be used to justify longer sentences.

Fortunately, there is a viable path toward legally challenging the use of risk

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Pretrial detention rate

0%

15%

30%

100%

height

0%

Percentage of counties in state using pretrial risk assessment tools

assessments for sentencing. In 1976, the Supreme Court established a precedent for rejecting statistically supported generalizations based on gender in Craig v.

Boren. As part of the ruling, the Court struck down an Oklahoma statute that allowed only women to purchase a limited selection of beer at age 18, even though existing statistical evidence concluded that men between 18 and 21 were over 10 times more likely than their female peers to drive while drunk. As a Harvard paper argues, factoring gender into risk assessments could be similarly unconstitutional even if it makes the algorithm stronger—an example of the legal system valuing fairness over accuracy. If the effect of removing defendants’ genders in risk assessment calculations is significant, a legal mandate to remove gender from risk assessments could weaken the calculations enough to encourage states to reduce their reliance on them.

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Unfortunately, such an alteration could render risk assessments completely useless. Indeed, rectifying risk assessments’ less palatable aspects could water them down to the point where they can no longer aid the sectors that they have the potential to help. Nevertheless, the criminal justice system’s first priority must be to uphold its values and ensure the equal protection of all defendants. When risk assessments threaten those standards, there should be no room for them at all in the American justice system.

Nicholas Lindseth ‘20 is an intended English and Political Science concentrator and a US Staff Writer at BPR. Infographics by Amy Huang, Rohit Chaparala, Klara Auerbach & Aansh Shah.

Interview with

Jessie Handbury Jessie Handbury is Assistant Professor of Real Estate at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, an NBER Research Fellow, and a Penn Institute for Urban Research Faculty Fellow. Professor Handbury has been quoted in many publications such as the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, commenting on the state of American cities. She is currently researching the influence of income on food deserts in America.

Differences in food access only explain 10 percent of disparities in consumption across education groups. If the barrier isn’t access, then what is it?

If you put a college-educated and non-college-educated person in a market, they’re going to buy vastly different food products. So even though they have the same choices, they’re going to buy different things. There are a whole lot of reasons why that may be the case. It could be earning different pay, budget constraints, the willingness to pay driven by different foods, education, different tastes to healthy foods, kitchen size, or time to prepare healthy food—there is a whole lot of other stuff going on. The key thing in our research is to say that whatever is going on is not going to be fixed by just building a new market. If you get rid of food deserts, that’s going to equalize the choices for different kinds of households, but it’s not going very far to equalize what they are purchasing. There could be some arguments about long-term exposure to healthy foods; if they see fruits and vegetables again and again, maybe they will start buying.

How does the “Whole Foods effect”—a supermarket-driven form of gentrification—affect the future of food deserts?

That’s not a food thing; that’s about gentrification in general.

I don’t think Whole Foods makes any claims to be affordable.

I think what’s really happening there is that Whole Foods is moving into a new neighborhood—not with the goal to resolve the problem of food deserts, but to serve the influx of college educated, wealthy households, whom they predict will gentrify the surrounding neighborhoods. That in itself has an impact on the low-income households. The fact that low-income households have access to Whole Foods doesn’t go very far in compensating them for the fact that their rents are going up and they might have to move. Moreover, not only have the housing costs gone up, but maybe the costs of groceries have gone up as well because the Whole Foods has displaced a more feasibly priced store, even if it wasn’t offering healthy foods.

Interviewed by `Cayla Kaplan

Can farmers markets or urban agriculture resolve the issue of new markets not aligning with the food culture of the community?

I don’t know why a food market selling healthy foods wouldn’t also appeal to the food culture of the residents.

However, it could make a difference; maybe food market chains haven’t identified that there are different food cultures and they could profitably sell more healthy foods to certain populations by displaying them in a different way.

That’s also saying you need to offer foods properly in order to get business. The concern people have with food deserts is that low-income people aren’t getting the same food quality; they want low-income people to have the same opportunities to eat healthy foods. Thinking about how to display foods would suggest a different approach to managing the issue of food deserts.

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ISLAND INTERFERENCE T HE HISTO RY O F ST RA I N ED US -HA I TI R EL AT I O NS

IN

January, President Trump expressed disgust at the prospect of immigrants traveling to the United States from Haiti and parts of Africa, referring to those places as “shithole countries.” Upon learning that Haitians brought to the country as children would receive protections under a nascent bipartisan plan, he asked, “Why do we want people from Haiti here?” The president’s comments—which one conservative writer called monstrous and dehumanizing—sparked an intense and immediate backlash. Indeed, President Trump’s gross generalization failed to acknowledge the long history of foreign interference in Haiti that has contributed to the failures of its economic and political systems— interference in which the United States is complicit. Since Haiti’s independence, the United States has continuously subverted the Caribbean nation’s progress, refusing to trade with Haiti at the country’s inception, staging regular interventions in Haitian politics, and organizing an earthquake relief effort that proved woefully underwhelming. In the face of over 200 years of broken promises, an honest assessment of the United States’ often-destructive role in the evolution of Haiti is long overdue.

Haiti, like the United States, is the product of revolution. For three centuries, under both Spanish and French colonial rule, Haiti was devoted to sugar production—a practice that wildly enriched the colony’s land-owning upper class and led to the importation of hundreds of thousands of slaves. In 1791, these slaves erupted in revolt. Former slave Toussaint Louverture led the rebels’ victory over Spanish and British troops, who’d hoped to seize the colony as France reeled from revolution. In 1804, soldiers commanded by Jean-Jacques Dessalines repelled a 50,000-strong expeditionary force, clearing the way for Dessalines to declare Haiti’s independence and establish the world’s first Black republic.

Despite the shared experiences of anticolonial revolution in both countries, American officials—wary of endorsing a nation run by former slaves at the height of US slavery— elected to economically isolate Haiti. Though the United States finally recognized Haiti in 1862, American presidents treated Haiti more like an expendable plaything—potentially useful as annexed territory or as the site of a naval base—than a sovereign state. In 1915, Woodrow Wilson ordered an invasion of Haiti purportedly to restore order after the assassination of the erstwhile Haitian head of state, Jean Vilbrun

Timeline of US Interference in Haiti 1804

Haiti declares Independence

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1834

France recognizes Haitian independence in exchange for financial indemnity of 150 million francs.

1915

3,000 United States Marines enter Haiti to begin a 19 year occupation.

1934

Within six weeks of the occupation, US government representatives seize control of Haiti’s customs houses and administrative institutions, including the banks and the national treasury.

Under US government control, a total of 40 percent of Haiti’s national income is designated to repay debts to American and French banks.

The US withdraws from Haiti.

Guillaume Sam. The true object of the intervention, of course, was less magnanimous: Wilson aimed to undercut foreign influence in Haiti and reassert American primacy in the Caribbean. Some American officials feared that Haiti’s debt payments to France—payments that suffocated the Haitian economy for 122 years—brought the country worrisomely close to the French sphere of influence.

The problems of the developing world have ballooned and metastasized to "shithole" proportions precisely because of deliberate American policy.

Wilson’s lofty aspirations of internationalism and global self-determination clearly didn’t apply to Haiti. Over the course of the nearly two-decade American occupation, the US government imposed its will on virtually every dimension of Haitian society. In 1914, Marines relocated $500,000 from the Haitian National Bank to New York for “safe-keeping.” A year later, the United States established the Haitian Gendarmerie, a police force under Marine Corps authority, and manipulated elections to install a president more amenable to US interests.

When the Haitian legislature, wary of further interference, refused to adopt a new

1986

The Reagan administration forces Jean-Claude to leave and suspends aid to Haiti.

1992

constitution in 1917 that permitted foreign land ownership, the United States had the legislature dissolved.

Whatever benefits came of the invasion never reached ordinary Haitians. To build the nation’s infrastructure, the Gendarmerie organized a forced labor system.

Nearly half of Haiti’s national revenues were diverted to the coffers of American and French financiers, crippling budgets for public services. And some 15,000 Haitians, routinely made the targets of disproportionate violence, died during the occupation. In 1933, a Marine Corps general who commanded troops in Haiti, lamented, “I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.”

Though American Marines departed from Haiti in 1934, the US government tacitly supported dictators, who, despite committing atrocities against the Haitian people, were tolerated in exchange for support in the Cold War. Most notorious among these was Jean-Claude Duvalier, the son of a despot whose propensity for violence approached “psychotic proportions at times,” as a State Department study concluded. When the younger Duvalier took power, many observers hoped he would renounce his father’s brutality and put Haiti on the path to reform and development. These optimistic projections never came to pass.

1994-1995

George HW Bush administration embargoes and blockades Haiti, suspending all but humanitarian aid. US factories are exempted from the embargo.

Operation Uphold Democracy, a military intervention designed to remove the military regime that overthrew elected President Aristide and oversee the transition, commences.

The Clinton administration imposes an economic blockade that further impoverishes the country.

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Instead, Duvalier ruled with an oppressive hand, committing countless human rights violations and crushing political opposition. Positioning Haiti as a counterweight to communist-ruled Cuba in the Caribbean, Duvalier secured the support of one American administration after another.

The US, in return, channeled large sums of military aid to Duvalier’s regime—aid used to kill and imprison dissenters.

In the face of over 200 years of broken promises, an honest assessment of the United States’ often-destructive role in the evolution of Haiti is long overdue.

To boost development, Duvalier invited foreign companies to develop industrial facilities in Haiti’s cities. Though this spurred some employment, the lack of accompanying investments in infrastructure led the country, particularly its capital of Port-au-Prince, to expand haphazardly, giving rise to slums unable to withstand the pressure of natural disasters. Buckling under the environmental degradation and poverty they faced at home, hundreds of thousands of Haitians emigrated: Between 1980 and 1990, the population of Haitian immigrants in the US more than doubled.

A national uprising finally ousted Duvalier in 1986, after a 15-year reign of terror. But even in his final moments as “president-for-life,” when his misdeeds were no longer concealable, the US continued to support Duvalier, flying him into exile on a US Air Force plane.

While international political interference remained the norm in Haiti well into the 21st century, accompanying development efforts were half-hearted. The culmination of ineffective foreign aid presented itself most obviously in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake, which killed up to 300,000 people, injured another 300,000, displaced 1.5 million, and leveled 4,000 schools. The international community rushed to provide aid to Haiti, with donations and pledges totaling $13.5 billion— enough to cut every Haitian a $1,000 check.

Eight years later, however, the outpouring

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of international humanitarian assistance has yielded little sustained recovery.

The American response in Haiti has overwhelmingly placed American businesses ahead of the Haitian people. In 2014, the US had spent $2.8 billion of the $3.8 billion in aid they promised, but only 5.4 percent of this sum actually went into the hands of Haitians. The US is the only major donor country that refuses to procure food locally when providing international aid; it crowded out Haitian farmers by sending the country $200 million worth of American-produced and subsidized food.

Even more egregious is that multimillion dollar USAID contracts haven’t delivered results, leaving a staggering array of unfulfilled promises. For example, the federal government awarded $2 million to Chemonics International, one of the largest recipients of USAID relief spending, to construct a replacement for Haiti’s parliament.

The group ended up building only a shell, neglecting to include any offices in the building’s chambers. Similarly, a 2013 audit of USAID’s credit program, which provided Haitian banks with $37 million to loan to Haitian companies, found only a fraction of the money was loaned out—and very little of it went to the most economically underserved and marginalized groups.

The history of American foreign policy cannot so neatly be divorced from the fates of “shithole” countries. As the case of Haiti illustrates, the problems of the developing world have ballooned and metastasized to “shithole” proportions precisely because of deliberate American policy. No matter what Trump thinks, the reality is not so much that the world is full of shitholes than it is that the United States may be extremely, devastatingly adept at helping create them.

Anuj Krishnamurthy ‘18 is an International Relations and Economics concentrator.

Infographic by Klara Auerbach.

Influencing Ads Rejecting tech companies’ push for self-regulation

I

n 2012, an estimated $160 million was spent on digital political advertisements. By 2016, that number had jumped to $1.4 billion. Over the last few decades, a robust system of government rules and regulations has evolved to document the individuals or groups behind political ads on radio and television. The goal is simple: to ensure public disclosure of most spending on political ads. However, recent events have shown that foreign or rogue agents are willing and able to use digital advertisements to exploit the gaps in US laws.

To protect America’s electoral integrity, standard regulations on political advertisements must be applied to online ads.

One prominent worry is the influence of foreign nationals on US elections.

Facebook has admitted that Russian entities spent as much as $100,000 in 2016 on nearly 3,000 advertisements backing candidates or taking inflammatory stances on controversial American political issues.

The Internet Research Agency, a shadowy Russian organization, devised a strategy to meddle in the 2016 election in which advertisements played an important role.

One notable effort to address these electoral attacks is the Honest Ads Act, a bipartisan Senate bill that would plug several of the legal gaps foreign actors exploited in 2016. The bill would apply existing rules on political advertisements in broadcast and print media to digital advertisements. For example, the act would require digital platforms such as Facebook and Google to collect information on those who purchase advertisements—something television and radio broadcasters already must do. However, the Honest Ads Act doesn’t go far enough.

Among other shortcomings, it fails to expand the timeline for disclosure on electioneering communications beyond the

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existing 30 days before a primary and 60 days before a general election. Russian ads were known to be sold as early as June of 2015, making such 30- or 60-day limits toothless.

Another pressing challenge relates to automated or unpaid internet actors, known as bots. Bots are sometimes tools of malicious actors. Other times, however, automated accounts such as @NYTimes, or @StayWokeBot can spread important information and promote engagement.

The Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan organization focusing on campaign and election law, says that more research must be done to determine “how political actors spend money to disseminate messages through bots.”

Ideally, digital platforms can play this role. Facebook and Twitter—which received much of the negative press directed toward tech companies following the election—have supported anti-bot and spam measures, but have also lobbied to self-impose regulations in lieu of government regulation. As private entities less

Recent events have shown that foreign or rogue agents are willing and able to use digital advertisements to exploit the gaps in US laws.

To protect America’s electoral integrity, standard regulations on political advertisements must be applied to online ads. burdened by bureaucracy, such companies can respond to problems faster than government can. On issues such as dealing with automated users, the companies themselves are best positioned to enact quick fixes. However, there are limits to how much private, for-profit companies should be trusted to help preserve electoral integrity.

It’s imperative that the government mandate public disclosure for political advertisements. A multitude of legal requirements already exist to ensure disclosure for traditional print and broadcast media. Even in Citizens United v. FEC, a case which loosened federal regulation of campaign finance, the Supreme Court affirmed the importance of disclosing who pays for advertisements: Disclosures give voters the chance to “evaluate the arguments to which they are being subjected” and to “make informed decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and messages.”

Facebook now promises to “strengthen enforcement against improper ads” and establish future public disclosure requirements for political ads on the platform. But in 2016, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called the idea of Russian influence via Facebook “crazy.” Only after a year of public scrutiny did Facebook reverse course. Twitter, too, only revealed a list of accounts connected to known Russia-controlled Facebook pages after

weeks of pressure. Tech companies often struggle to disentangle politics from profit; government agencies, designed to serve the public interest, don’t face the same challenge. Meaningful regulation should naturally come from the latter.

CIA Director Mike Pompeo says he has “every expectation” of continued foreign interference in American elections, including in the upcoming 2018 midterm elections. With these impending threats, government regulation is needed to ensure a sufficient standard of action. Although prompt action may mean that private and public involvement coexist today, the most secure preservation of democracy will ultimately come through thoughtful and impartial government intervention.

Peter Lees ‘21 is an intended Visual Arts and Public Policy concentrator.

Illustration by Adrienne Hugh.

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Interview with

Hank Herrera Hank Herrera is President & CEO of the Center for Popular Research, Education & Policy, a nonprofit community-based organization that conducts participatory research, education, and policy in low-income and vulnerable communities. A self-described “food justice freak,” Herrera co-founded Dig Deep Farms and Produce and assisted in research for the USDA-funded Food Dignity Project. He recently formed New Hope Farms, which links small farms with small corner stores to grow and sell healthy, sustainable, affordable, and local food.

What are some of the biggest problems with America’s food system today?

I suppose the quickest way to answer that is to say that the industrial food system that we have involves global supply chains and production systems that are harmful to the environment. It involves concentration of ownership of the means of production, which has made things very economically difficult for family and small farmers, led to movement of people from rural to urban areas, and caused the loss of jobs. It also involves the production of highly processed foods that we see if we go into the supermarket and walk the so-called center aisles, which are filled with foods that are unhealthy for us–causing health problems such as Type 2 diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease. Additionally, the lack of price supports and supply management causes problems for farmers who overproduce and lose money… and the industrial food system basically involves market failure, because it systematically excludes low-income communities and communities of color from access to healthy food.

What is food sovereignty and why is it important?

Food sovereignty is a concept that emerged in the late 1990s from a group called La Vía Campesina, which advocates for the rights of peasant farmers. It involves the idea that a people, a culture, a community, should have the right to produce the food that the people in that community want to eat, and that they should have full ownership of the means of production and the exchange of that food. So it involves access to healthy food, and it involves ownership of the food system itself.

What connection is there between food sovereignty and environmentally sustainable agriculture?

I’ve seen the banners of organic agriculture, sustainable agriculture, regenerative agriculture; it’s a long parade! And yet, the basics of producing using low-input methods have been known for millennia. Traditional agriculture around the world has always been basically organic, and sustainable, and regenerative.

But since World War II, all of those methods of producing and distributing food have been disrupted by what people call industrial agriculture, or corporate agribusiness. So, if we could go “back to the future” and return to those traditional methods of food production and exchange, where every locality sustained itself, we might have a chance. But as you know, we live in a money-driven social system, and it’s not a mistake that corporations acquire other corporations and concentrate ownership. Changing that system to make it more sustainable is like tweaking around the edges.

That fight is going to go on, and the only way it’s going to change is if people stand up and say, “I don’t care, this is not good for us, and we need to change it.” But people aren’t willing to stand up to Monsanto, because that’s the way the modern world works, and the corporations know that and benefit from it.

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